Ballad of the Loved Dead
by Anamary Armygram
Summary: A necrophile reflects on his past. A slightly AU verse adaptation of C.M. Eddy's short story "The Loved Dead" (now best known for having been edited by H.P. Lovecraft).


This is C.M. Eddy's 1919 short story, "The Loved Dead," rendered in ballad form, slightly AU. Like its original, this adaptation centers on necrophilia and also touches on themes of incest, wartime violence, murder, and suicide. It is, that is to say, strong milk: you have been warned.

* * *

"A pedophile cannot become a child, a shoe fetishist cannot become a shoe, but a necrophile can and does flip over to the other side. Eventually—nay, inevitably—he becomes the object of his own weird brand of perversion: a dead body."  
— Supervert, _The Necrophilia Variations_

* * *

They found him sprawled upon a grave  
And giggling like a bride.  
The Black Maria idled by.  
They wrested him inside.

"Great God," said Bailey, "He's gone mad!"  
"And you're surprised?" said Roarke.  
And Bailey found his little flask  
And threw away the cork.

The madman had a scribbled book.  
Roarke drove, and Bailey read  
The saturnine confessions of  
The man who loved the dead:

"This graveyard stinks of earth and rot.  
The moon is thin and wan.  
It's midnight now, and come what may  
I will not face the dawn.

"I was a homely sickly child:  
Small, sallow-faced, depressed,  
Forever breathing mingled fumes  
Of languour and unrest.

"When I was sixteen, all came new.  
My grandfather had died.  
My mother took me to the wake.  
I shuffled by her side.

"The lilies made me headachey.  
I slouched and was deject.  
But—when I saw the dead man's face  
My spine became erect!

"My body was electrified  
By some demonic force:  
My famished eyes unhinged their jaws  
And feasted on the corse.

"For two whole weeks I was alert  
As anyone could be,  
But never traced it to its root:  
That death is life to me.

"My mother died. I mourned her—yet  
My grief was checked by lust.  
My father died, and at his grave  
I reveled in the dust.

"I moved away, and as I grew  
Aware of my condition,  
Found honest work that suited me:  
Assisting a mortician.

"I was discreet the first six months,  
And wild and careless after,  
Till one day I was found asleep  
Embracing a cadaver.

"How my employer pitied me!  
That bleak environment  
Had quite unstrung my nerves, he said.  
I took my pay and went.

"The moment war broke out I was  
Enlisted and entrenched.  
_Decorum non, sed dulce erat_.*"  
Roarke, the stoic, blenched.

"The bullets droned, the dying moaned,  
The gas grenades did hiss:  
Four years of blood-red charnel Hell…  
Four years of ceaseless bliss!

"To Irishmen, a bottle;  
To Chinamen, a pipe;  
To me, a broken jar of clay:  
They all are of a type.

"They all expand the appetite  
As fast as it is fed.  
So coming home to peace I feared  
How much I craved the dead.

"Then came the nights a furtive figure  
Stalked the shadowed streets  
And gratified the journalists  
Who pen the yellow sheets.

"I killed with razor, pistol, club,  
Stiletto and garotte.  
I made no pattern, left no clue,  
Had no cause to be caught.

"Then one black night, as I enjoyed  
A woman I had bled,  
A shouting sounded in the street.  
I stumbled from the bed.

"A drunken couple, coming home,  
Had fought and come to blows.  
The bitch would have the bastard's head  
For bloodying her nose.

"Though I was not detected yet,  
I had no time for ease.  
A row like that, and at that hour,  
Would soon attract police.

"I broke a window out. I jumped  
Into the trashy yard  
Unfastened, bloodied, still enflamed,  
And almost caught off-guard.

"I laid my course through alleyways.  
They never saw my face.  
I crossed the creek, I pierced the woods,  
And finally slowed my pace.

"An awful recollection came  
Behind the rising sun:  
I'd had two knives the night before  
And now had only one.

"One knife's my jury, speaking guilt  
From prints of hands ungloved;  
And one's my executioner.  
I'll _be _what I have loved!

"For fear and danger, heat and cold,  
Ache, sickness, hunger, thirst  
Though pains indeed, are joys beside  
The pain which is the worst.

"The nameless sensuality—  
The craving that consumes—  
The veil of mental scum that's only  
Lifted in the tombs.

"I've walked for days, and made it home  
To where my parents lie.  
I'll not be caged with _living _men,  
Which worse is than to die."

Then Bailey frowned. "I searched him well.  
I swear he had no knife."  
Roarke stopped the van. The madman was  
Unmarked—but void of life.

The coroner confirmed him dead  
And would say little more,  
But showed the blade: he'd _swallowed _it  
At least the day before.

* * *

* "It wasn't pretty, but it was sweet."


End file.
